Thursday, April 26, 2018

Movie Review: 'Avengers: Infinity War'

Wow! Well, that was Marvelously epic! 😉

I'm not a Marvel sweaty / fanboy and my favourite MCU movies have been the ones that are less superhero ones, like 'Guardians Of The Galaxy', 'Captain America: Winter Soldier' and the first 'Iron Man', but I'll make an exception for 'Infinity War'! I enjoyed it a lot.

The stakes have never been so high in the MCU and this time there are consequences! Which makes a brutal, but welcome change with these movies! With all the heroes from all the Marvel MCU movies so far, barring 'Ant-Man' (but it's explained where him and Hawkeye actually are early on), going up against the might of Thanos and the Black Order, there were always going to be some casualties, even some high profile ones! (Although we'll definitely be seeing some of them again. Comic book heroes never stay gone for very long - especially when their movies are successful and popular!)

The movie picks up where 'Thor Ragnarok' finishes, straight after the foreboding final end credit scene (so I would recommend watching that perhaps before this), and immediately things aren't looking good!

Thanos is definitely one of the better MCU villains. He's not your generic, monologuing cardboard villain. He seems to genuinely believe in what he's doing is right, the sometimes hallmark of a convincing villain, and we see flashbacks of his rise and destruction and his motivations seem well thought out.

With all the heroes that are on screen, you'd think it might be a bit too overcrowded. Not so. The heroes are split into groups taking on Thanos and that works really well, with the different personalities and egos clashing within the groups, especially (with no surprise) between the group of Tony Stark / Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Star Lord and Spider-Man. The narrative doesn't seem clogged or convoluted with that many characters on screen either (except of course for the movie posters, of which the one by Paul Shipper, above, is one of the best compositionally with involving everyone), and everybody plays a part without any being too domineering or with anyone with not having enough screen time.

'Infinity War' is spectacular, funny, devastating and dramatic. This definitely ranks up there near the top of my favourite MCU movies. If Kevin Feige's endgame plan has been leading up to this and to 'Avengers 4' over the past 10 years of movies, then hats off to you, sir! Although you'll get more out of the movie if you've seen most of the MCU than if you haven't seen any at all. This isn't a movie to to go into if you're unfamiliar with the previous movies.

With the way things finish, you hunger for more and it's just a shame we've now got to wait a year for 'Avengers 4' to see how things get resolved! But I'm really looking forward to seeing how they do.

Oh, there's only 1 end credits scene, right at the very end, but it's worth staying for!